The Deadly Arms Game Corruption Stories The Uns of India Gov 2.0: 10 Learnings for India Pretty Good Principles for India It’s Up To Us Now India’s Silent Majority 2 Questions on India and My Answers Neighbourhood Action Committees

Following a tradition from 2008 and 2009, in this last week of the year, I am giving links to what I think where some of my better posts. I have categorised them into five topics: Digital India, Panels and Presentations, Entrepreneurship, Politics and Personal. Opportunities in India’s Digital Space Boosting Mobile Data: Part 1, Part […]

From a post a year ago: CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. But what it should really mean is Customer Relationship Monetisation. Most companies spend a lot of effort working through the strategies for new customer acquisition. But little is done for leveraging the existing customers – beyond the first product the customer signs up […]

This week’s links: In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm: from the New York Times. “We need help thinking.” What’s driving Groupon? by John Battelle. “Groupon, I believe, has the potential to be a new proxy – one that subsumes the platforms of both the Internet and the telephone, and adds multiple dimensions beyond them.”Also see […]

The reco for this movie came up in our of our Book Club meetings. I watched the DVD of this 1957 black-and-white movie one evening, and it was fascinating. The entire movie is set in a single room, and yet it is so engrossing. The takeaway for me: it just takes one person to make […]

I have to admit I don’t read much of the Indian fiction. But when I came across Anuja Chauhan’s “Battle for Bittora”, I found it hard to resist because of its political theme. And I wasn’t disappointed. The “wicked humour” is delightful. Pick it up and read it on one of the lazy holidays afternoons […]

For the first time in many years, winter really feels like it in Mumbai. With temperatures going down to 16-17 degrees Celsius, it is a pleasant change from the hot and humid nights that can gets to experience all year round in the city! Even with the chill, I still haven’t found the need to […]

India is a democracy. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the country has a “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” But Indians have to understand that most of India’s maladies are a consequence of their abdication of the responsibility that necessarily accompanies the rights Indians have in a democratic system. […]

The opportunity to amass phenomenal wealth that political power affords is the main driver for people with neither aptitude nor desire for governing to go to enormous lengths to enter politics. Over time, this leads to the erosion of public morality and ethics. The results of the recent assembly elections in Bihar illustrate this reality. In […]

I wrote a series last November on the five disruptions: MNP, MVNO, 3G, Voice Competition, VAS Competition. From the MVNO post: By now, we should have seen a few real Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in India, and not just the single pseudo MVNO in the form of Virgin Mobile. MVNOs don’t set up their […]

This week’s links: TIME Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The two-second advantage: An article on Vivek Ranadive of Tibco in Economic Times. “In the 21st century, a little bit of right information that you get a little bit beforehand is more valuable than all the information in the world six months […]

The trouble with corruption is that it erodes trust. It limits welfare-improving trades that are so central to the economic efficiency of any system, capitalist or socialist. It also leads to inefficiency of resource allocation. The telecom spectrum sale scam is a stark example of that. As it happens, some of the corporations that obtained […]

To explain how deeply corruption has penetrated Indian society, let me narrate a few stories I have heard from friends and business associates. It is only when one hears these true stories that one realizes how flawed our system is. A large company won a contract for a waste management project in a global tender. […]

Corruption has unfortunately become an all-encompassing feature of India. Indians are all too familiar with it. For citizens dealing with all levels of government, routine abuse of power has lost its ability to shock or even to evoke comment. Most people accept corruption as a fact of life. What should truly disturb us is corruption […]

Although wrong-doing was alleged immediately after the sale in 2008, it was only in November this year that Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, forced Raja to resign. The telecom minister’s position became untenable after the Supreme Court intervened, and several potentially damaging phone recordings involving a high-powered lobbyist and prominent journalists were leaked. Besides forcing […]

I wrote an essay for India Knowledge@Wharton. From the introduction: “The telecom scam that recently forced the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja defrauded the country to the tune of nearly US$40 billion. Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of […]

I wrote this last year: What is it that we can ask them to do so we can start creating a thriving ecosystem around broadband? According to me, there are two things – and only two things – that the government should do: Open up the 40+ million wireline local loops owned by BSNL and […]